Wankel engines first saw use in production cars as early as 1964 — and not even in a Mazda, but rather in an NSU. That little single-rotor powerplant quickly evolved into the more typical two ...

Take the Wankel engine, or rotary engine, for example. Few automakers have ever created one, and Mazda was the only one to put it into mass production in models like the RX-7 and RX-8. It saw ...

Although there was briefly a company called Rotary Rocket, the term is much better known as a nickname for the Mazda RX-7 — one of the few cars that used a Wankel, or rotary, engine. If you ever ...

The issue, as it has pretty much always been, is environmental. While the Wankel rotary engine does indeed make a lot of power in a small, lightweight package, it does so while burning lots of ...

Mazda's Wankel rotary engine has always been unique in the automotive landscape as a mass-produced internal combustion engine that eschews such unsightly items as pistons, valves and camshafts.